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How to View Magento Error Logs

Magento is a very complex system which can make it difficult to identify any problems. Fortunately, the system keeps detailed error logs which can be used to troubleshoot and find errors. By learning how to view error logs you can watch out for any potential problems as they develop without needing to wait for them to become massive problems for your customers.

Understanding Magento Problems

There are lots of different errors which can affect users of Magento, these include:

Error Logs

Magento keeps error logs which can be useful to understand problems. However, quite often the error is so severe that it causes the whole system to crash before it gets the chance to record the error.

In this case, Apache logs will be helpful. Read your server help guide to learn how to read your apache error logs.

Magento Error Logging

Assuming Magento didn’t completely crash then, it should have recorded details of the error which can be very valuable in solving the problem.

Use an FTP client to navigate to the root directory of Magento. Then go into var, and select the report folder. Inside here there will be files with numbers as the name. Open one of these files, and you will get to read about the error. There are also more details which can be very useful to help fix the issue.

Enabling Advanced Logging

Magento doesn’t log every error all the time. Sometimes it will just ignore and move on. To stop it from doing this you can enable advanced logging.

Log into your Magento admin panel and navigate to System, Configuration, Advanced, Developer, and Log Settings. Then change the Enabled setting to yes.

Whenever an error is experienced, two files will be created in the var/log/ directory. If you can’t find these files, then it simply means that the store hasn’t yet recorded any errors.

Beware though that if you enable advanced logging, there’s no need to worry too much. A lot of the errors reported will be minor and don’t require any intervention. You can always disable advanced logging in the future if you find it causing too many reports.

Conclusion

By understanding how to find and interpret error logs in Magento, you will find it easier to spot and fix problems before they cause any embarrassment. This is a time-consuming task, but it is worth doing properly.